One of My Favorite Things

Everyone is thrilled in the spring when yellow explodes all over the garden. Forsythia, Crocuses, Daffodils, all burst forth like trumpets blaring “THE SUN IS SHINING; THE AIR IS WARMING; HURRAH!”

But one of my favorite spring trumpeters is the Barren Strawberry, Waldsteinia fragaroides. It is called “barren” because, although it closely resembles a strawberry plant in foliage form, it does not produce a showy, human-edible fruit. It is a native groundcover that sits quietly, only about three inches tall, with shiny green foliage most of the year; in winter the foliage fades to a glossy bronze. But come the end of March this charmer is a blooming machine, covered with tiny, happy, hungry pollinators gorging themselves on the promise of spring. And for some reason it seems only to attract the little bitsy pollinators, the tiniest bees and wasps and flies we mostly overlook unless we are watching specifically for them. I don’t know why that is; I must ask Cynthia. It’s certainly not due to shy flowers – this little plant trumpets “yellow” as loudly as its larger springtime fellows. When they bloom, the plants are a luminous mass of yellow stars suspended over shiny green. The bloom season lasts not quite for a month, and then the cheery little shiny, scalloped foliage remains to set off the later, blowsier blossoms of the perennials around and above it.

Like the best of groundcovers, Waldsteinia smothers all of the weeds that try to come up through it. From seven little 3” potted plants about eight years ago, my patch has expanded to a robust 6’ x 4’ section of bright green happiness impenetrable by the weeds and Helleborus foetidus seedlings that colonize the informal bed around it. Speaking of the Stinking Hellebore, that’s another favorite – for another time. But the Waldsteinia is such a very happy little plant, I would gladly have it cover three times that space in my gardens, or perhaps thirty times that space. I recommend it highly!